Ildjarn’s debut demo, Unknown
Truths, is somewhat of a surprise for those familiar with his more famous
releases. Rather than the quick, punchy black metal blitzes Ildjarn is known
for, here he performs muddy and weighted pieces that lack the vision and
originality most of his other works.
Like all Ildjarn recordings, Unknown Truths is pretty stripped down. However, whereas most
Ildjarn releases have more of a sharp and grating rawness to them, the sound
quality here is dense and gritty. The drums are in the forefront, but the
guitars and vocals are still easily audible. The guitars don’t have the best
tone and would benefit from a bit more power, but overall the sound quality is
decent.
Unknown Truths consists
of six slow to mid-tempo riff oriented pieces of black metal. The songs are grounded
in big, lumbering riffs that unfortunately, fail to impress. The bulky hooks just
aren’t that inspiring. This is ultimately the downfall of Unknown Truths. For a band as minimal as Ildjarn, the quality of
the riffs is of the utmost importance. Usually Ildjarn delivers big time, but
here there just isn’t much that is captivating. The other elements fail to pick
up the slack. The drums are pretty simple, but not quite as monochromatic as
most Ildjarn recordings. The vocals are the strength; they’re vicious and
unrelenting. That said, they aren’t
so captivating that they can carry the recording.
Each song is introduced with a brief ambient passage, which
are kind of cool. They sound like excerpts from some obscure 70’s sci-fi film.
There really isn’t any compositional connection between the ambient passages
and the metal though; the ambient sections are just slapped on the front of
black metal tracks with no attention paid to integrating these two disparate
elements.
Obviously Ildjarn had not developed his own musical identity
when he recorded this demo. One can see him playing with lo-fi production and minimalistic compositions, but he hasn’t found the correct formula for them yet. There’s also
the ambient he would later excel at, but here it’s only a whimsical frill. Slightly
interesting for those interested in tracking the early genesis of Ildjarn’s
sound, but otherwise a pretty insignificant release.
Overall: 4.5/10
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